Almost every organization in the NBA has good reason to believe their operation is more positive and productive than the Kings. The Karl component has taken this to an all-new level of awful, if only because the writing has been on the wall about his situation for so long.

The wildly talented Cousins is a lot of things, but he’s no dummy. He sees the justifiable criticism of Ranadive, whose refusal to stand by the only NBA coach who truly connected with Cousins, Michael Malone, in Dec. 2014 was one of the many plot twists that helped cause this mess.

He sees the in-fighting on the coaching staff, with assistant coach Nancy Lieberman identified as a Ranadive confidante and thus unofficially exiled by Karl months ago.